An Honest Man
by Cacotechny
Summary: "He was an honest man, and he didn't deserve any of what happened to him." Once upon a time, M. Kruger was just a man with a different name eager to impress his boss and not screw up his new assignment. Little did he know that that 'little' assignment would change his life forever. M for various reasons, Elysium/District 9 Crossover, in progress.
1. These Hard Times

AN: So first, yeah, to my long-time watchers, I'm sorry this isn't _To All Ends_. This is the preliminary exploration of parallels between Wikus van de Merwe of _District 9 _and M. Kruger _of Elysium_. Two very different characters on the surface, but I divined up some parallels into which this idea has spawned.

_Huge_ angst warning. This is not a happy tale. A happy ending, maybe, eventually, but until then. It's tragic. It was painful writing it. Please bear with me on these first chapters – how it's writing itself/the format hasn't been leaving a lot of room for dialogue. Just lots and lots of exposition and narrative, for lack of better words. It's all terribly necessary, I'm afraid, to get to where we actually want to be, where the plot actually picks up.

And without further ado,

**An Honest Man**

Three years came. Three years went. District 10 and the departure of the ship made headlines, and then it faded from the public's eyes. People went about their lives, celebrating life, mourning death, and trudging through their existence with their little goals and hopes and dreams and tragedies. Three years isn't a long time in the grand scale of things.

It was, though, for Wikus van de Merwe. It was mind-numbing, hopeful, desperate, tedious, heart-breaking, and resigned, all not in any particular order. He spent three years waiting in line with Prawns for handouts. The first year he spent between hiding in the rubble in D9 and then alone in a white tent in D10, and then the Prawn population started to grow, and now he sits with three others in a white tent, eating and sleeping and whatever else Prawns did.

He fought for three years, fought with his own changing nature and the alien environment, the culture. He had come to understand the Prawns through Christopher and to foster a better informed attitude and empathy with them. They loved his purposeful kindness and how he went out of the way to try and make sure everybody had enough. He tried to teach about things and integrate, well, humanity into them. They rarely killed each other, the Prawns, but they still weren't helping themselves when it came to human relations. All the same, none of them knew who he was or what he'd done. Whispers went about the district, but nobody knew what had happened to the human that had helped Christopher and his son. They only knew his name. Some spurned it. They remembered his role in the initial evictions and his MNU body armor. Others, though, they seemed to try and understand. He fought to help them and so, came to understand them, so they, in turn, came to try and think of him more kindly.

But he was not one of them. And even against unfavorable odds – being turned into an alien and trapped within an unsuitable environment – he refused to let himself become one of them.

He had actually hid in the wreckage of Christopher's shack to wait out the rest of the transformation before emerging. While District 9 still sprawled over the edge of Johannesburg and the likes of Piet Smit and other suited individuals debated its future, he isolated himself, finding ways to bide his time that didn't involve drudging up painful memories. Instead, he devoted it to the future.

Tania van de Merwe would find the products of his efforts in the form of tiny metal flowers and trinkets crafted from tin cans and scraps of metal. Each one he made symbolized in his mind the day when he would be able to return to her, his angel. It was his way, too, of showing her that her husband was still alive. That he hadn't forgotten her. And that he would return one day. He intended to give her hope, and in turn, kept hope alive within himself. The trips into the human part of the city were dangerous, and he almost got caught once and was chased by dogs out of the sight of their handlers until he escaped over the fence back into D9. But it was worth it. He wished he could stay and see her reaction, but that required him to stay until daylight. That was too dangerous.

Now and again he would recline on a pile of dirt or sit up against a collapsing shack to daydream of that return, how triumphant it would be. He didn't have to wonder what her expression would be. He knew Tania better than he knew himself. She would be crying but laughing and smiling at the same time, and he knew he would do the same, and they'd run to each other and he'd be able to hold her in his arms and kiss her and say everything was okay again. And he'd be able to go to the police and tell them everything illegal about MNU and the things they did to him and to the Prawns and then, boy, would Piet Smit be laughing out of the other side of his face then. Then they'd see…

That kept him going, even when he went four days without food and a group of men came into the camp and singled him out because he was alone and an easy target and hit him for an eternity with pipes and other things. This only happened once. The next time, he threw one of them across the compound and smashed the other one so hard on the head, the skull collapsed around his fist. They chased him afterwards for a bit, until he made it back to the destroyed shack and pulled out the chain gun he'd unearthed from the wreckage of Obesandjo's compound. They avoided him for good after that.

But three years ran out. And then four. And then five.

He watched D10 turn into a bigger, messier version of D9. They began taking Prawns out of the camp and relocating them to other, less hospitable places in the world so the officials in Johannesburg could start to hope to be able to control them there. The population kept growing in spite of 'determined efforts' to control them. It made Wikus ill now to think on it.

He fidgeted for those extra two years, but he didn't quite lose all hope. Some days were better than others. Maybe Christopher had been waylaid. Maybe they had their own form of bureaucracy on Prawnworld or whatever it was called and they were caught up in red tape. Maybe Christopher had an overseer like Piet Smit. Or maybe they were building warships to come destroy the planet after hearing of the hardships of their people at the hands of the citizens of Earth.

It was all very troubling and most lines of thought bottlenecked into these worst-case scenarios. So he gave up thinking about it for a while and tried to continue occupying his thoughts in other ways. His grip on his humanity tightened like a vice.

One day, there was a commotion at the gate. Somebody was trying to come in. It looked like a rights group, or volunteers of some sort. They all wore the same collared shirt. The gatekeepers wouldn't let them. Most of the Prawns just took a second to glance in their direction, and then kept on doing Prawn-like things. Wikus observed for lack of anything better to do. They'd tried to get rights groups into the district to clean it up and volunteers to drop off donations, if that was really a thing and not just media hype. Wikus had his doubts. Piet Smit always made a show of hiding his intentions with pleasant words.

He stared, slightly bored, until a sight made his heart or hearts or whatever sort of organs he had jump and do summersaults. A blond woman with her hair pulled back stood in the front of the teaming rights group, arguing with the gate keepers. She looked tiny compared to the guard with his armor and rifle, but her mannerisms screamed of familiarity. His first thought flew to Tania and his heart leapt into his throat. He had to get closer to see, just so he could know for sure. He started to run to the gate but stopped, seeing the guard finally achieve success in turning the crowd away. Wikus wished fervently for telepathy but screamed her name in his head all the same.

The woman stood fixing the guards with a judgmental angle to her hips and said something before turning to depart. Wikus's stare must have caught her attention. She paused and looked in his direction, and Wikus thought he might pass out from the heady cocktail of sadness, pity, and anger in her eyes.

It was Tania, and for the first time in a long time, Wikus attempted to smile. But there was no recognition in her eyes, and Tania turned away and left.

The unexpected visit from Tania boosted his spirits for some time after that, in spite of only being able to see her for a few precious seconds. Maybe she'd found everything out. She'd never wanted to visit D9 before and only asked now and again about the Prawns and if he could teach her any of their language. But there she had been, trying to get into D10. Maybe she had indeed found out all the things MNU had done and started a grassroots movement. Maybe one day she'd get in he could see her up close without having snuck through Johannesburg and without scaring her. Maybe.

But still Christopher did not come. He didn't come in 2015 nor 2016 nor 2025 nor for a long time after that.

Wars divided and destroyed countries physically, politically, and financially. The wealth gap increased, and people like Piet Smit decided they needed to find a shelter from the time bomb that Earth had become and the development of something big began in 2085.

News of the human world did not trickle through the Prawn districts. D10 had become the largest settlement of Prawns on the planet with satellites in other parts of Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and southern Russia. And the Prawn became a global presence.

That is, until the plague. Patient Zero, a Prawn named Jason Nesbitt, fell ill. The sickness turned his eyes white and black fluid leaked from them. He died within a week. The Prawns, those old enough to remember beyond 1982 recalled it as the Weeping Death, and it spread like wildfire. The Old Ones laughed bitterly about it from their beds. It was only inevitable, they said. That was how they ended up on Earth to begin with, when the Weeping Death claimed the ship's crew and left all but a few of what had once been a great workforce. It had been a workforce to be proud of in those days, they said. Then they would look around at the squalid conditions and primal instinct ruling their people now and then only sigh.

By then, management of D10 had fallen apart with the wealth gap, and Prawns more or less moved around as they pleased, or at least weren't forcibly contained within the district anymore. When the Weeping Death started two tents down, Wikus didn't wait to see if it'd pass over Unit 825-X8. He fled D10 and did not enter the company of another living being until the Weeping Death had passed. The plague killed millions of Prawns the world over. Nobody really put effort into trying to cure them; it would not spread to humans. Besides, the human world was too preoccupied with saving its own skin. By the time the plague ended its tirade, three quarters of the Prawn population had been decimated. A small community remained in Johannesburg, returning to the original site of D9 and rebuilding there.

Something in the Prawn people changed over those years. As Wikus worked among them, he could feel it. Christopher Johnsons showed up in congregations, directing work efforts and trying to salvage what little Prawn technology was left. Wikus would nod to himself. They had all turned out okay.

Except him. In 2085, he turned 102. Something in the Prawns was unbelievably long-lived, given the right conditions and the right mindset. Wikus's own humanity, tucked away somewhere in his brain, ended up saving him, but it was a heart-breaking prospect. He was guaranteed to outlive anybody he'd ever known.

He lost track of Tania in 2029. She left Johannesburg for some reason, and he only found out when he managed to make it to their house one night only to find the windows and doors barred up, the car gone, and the metal flower he'd left last week still lying on the welcome mat. He hit his scaly knees there on the porch, alien sobs ripping at his throat as he scrabbled for the abandoned flower with his thumbless hand.

Piet Smit perhaps had something to do with it. Maybe they went after her, too. He refused to think she'd given up hope on him, but he stopped making the flowers. He tried searching for her some years later, when the wealth gap had first become noticeable enough to start conflicts. He hazarded walking out the front gate just to see if it was true, if they really could just walk out, and he did. The money to pay the guards had all run out. There were no means of communicating with the outside world from inside D10. He tried finding newspapers. He even went into a library one day, to the horror of the people inside, and tried looking her up on the Internet. This was very difficult with only five digits between two hands, but after much swearing and frustration, he managed to type passably. The appearance of the police interrupted the quest, though, and he had to flee to avoid being arrested or beaten.

He also managed to trick a detective type into searching for her by lying and saying a human could work a Prawn weapon by taking it apart, pulling out a piece, and putting it back together. Luckily, the man fell for it and agreed to get the weapon upon coming up with results. He returned with bad news. No news on any Tania van de Merwe, but a Tania Smit was killed in a car accident near a small community thirty miles north of Johannesburg. Wikus didn't even fight back later when the man returned with the gun in pieces, swearing and hitting him with the pieces and leaving him bruised and bleeding on the floor.

Then, as he lay there numb with Tania's ghost hovering over him, Wikus really began to lose hope.


	2. The Best Intentions

**Chapter Two: The Best Intentions**

When the ship blipped into existence some kilometers away from Johannesburg, people took note. When it slowed to a halt directly over the city, people panicked. The only people left alive from when it left were pushing 90 years old, so hardly anyone knew what was going to come out when the doors opened.

They did open this time, thankfully, saving crews the task of having to fly up and see if anything was alive. Instead, a shuttle detached from the bottom of the flying disk and coasted down to the ground. Some human officials churned out to greet them. Or, rather, they hoped it was a greeting and not an attack. The shuttle doors opened and out stepped a tall, rangy Prawn flanked by two others. He wouldn't have been called a young Prawn, but he had a youthful air about him and a cockiness in his stance that belied his age. At first, nobody knew what they were saying. Experts in xenolinguistics were few and far between, but the city police commissioner happened to have been raised by a former MNU member who believed in passing things on. He became their interpreter.

The message was simple. All the Prawns on Earth were to be taken home. This was just a transport crew. A discussion on their treatment over the past 90 years would be forthcoming. The Prawn nodded decisively at the end of the statement and set off towards the rebuilt D9, now called New Town. The officials gathered tried to gain more information – when would Prawn officials be contacting, how long would it take, what could they do? All the leader said was that their concerns would be addressed in due time. Now, he had an inherited promise to make good on.

When the ship went by overhead, the entirety of New Town stopped. A collective mind, an internal frequency they couldn't ignore caught their attention. Even those young enough to have never seen the mothership took notice. At once they all knew the time had come.

There was only one who didn't react. He sat up against the base of a metal building just beneath the overhang to stay out of the sun and an ancient brown coat draped over his shoulders. He kept a tin flower in the button hole. His eyes blinked slowly, foggy not quite with age but weariness and worsening by the week. Suspended between four fingers and one thumb was a rickety tablet display showing a news article in English. The article discussed the recent advancements in what the privileged were calling 'Elysium.' There was a rather interesting bit on a thing called a Med-Pod. They were having trouble with the wiring, though, and some tests had gone horribly, horribly wrong, but they were working on it and should have it finished by the time the Taurus Station was operational, and so on and so forth.

He avoided company now, and company avoided him. They looked on with something like pity, watching him age by the day. Some tried to help when he asked, but otherwise they left him alone. He was prone to lapses of silence where he'd see things, memories maybe or dreams perhaps, images from a life he wasn't sure was his anymore. His humanity huddled up into a tiny ball in the depths of his subconscious beneath layers of survival instinct and alien and death. He would address the phantoms behind his eyes, sometimes tenderly, sometimes violently. Sometimes he would do nothing at all, staying hours at a time in one place staring at nothing.

He only looked up from the article when somebody addressed him. The somebody's shadow fell across his screen, making it hard to read. He squinted up at whoever it was, but the somebody was already crouching down to get level with him. The stranger was alone, save for two other Prawns he didn't know. In fact, they were totally overlooked otherwise. The residents of New Town were shuffling out en masse towards the city.

He lowered the tablet. "Say again?" he muttered.

"Wikus van de Merwe. I have had trouble finding you."

"Who is this?…Wikus, you say? I have not heard this name in many years."

"I imagine not many know you by it any longer."

"You seem to."

What equated to a smile crinkled the corners of the other Prawn's eyes. "Because I know you." He shifted his crouch to a kneeling position. "I know you, you know me, and you knew my father."

"Your father?"

As soon as the question left his mandibles, a memory sprang up from the part of his mind buried deep by a century of waiting – the human part. As the memory played, a feeling similar to happiness warmed his thorax. His humanity crept out from under its rock, peering meekly out into the sun. His own smile came with a chuckle as he patted the 'boy' on the cheek more to make sure he was real and less out of tenderness.

"The boy. Christopher's boy, eh? I never did catch your name."

The Boy nodded, patting Wikus's shoulder happily. "You might have called me Oliver in your paperwork, once upon a time."

"Ah, yes." Wikus nodded to himself, chuckling again in surprise at himself. "I might have proofread that paperwork."

"You might have." Oliver's tone took on an excited note. "Wikus, I am here to fulfil the promise my father made to you. I am here to fix you."

All at once, Wikus's smile froze. It remained there on his face but it took on a waxy, death-like look. He shook Oliver's shoulder lightly, emitting a short bark of a laugh. The light was too bright, as it turned out. The man he used to be started to drown in the harshness of the past washing over him.

"Fix me? Don't you realize _how many fokkin' years it's been_?"

He was surprised by the venom in his own tone. Oliver was, too. Without attending to it, he shoved Oliver away from him and stood up. The tablet dropped to the ground. The two Prawns flanking Oliver tensed up.

"Wikus…"

"Don't you fokkin' _Wikus_ me, you little shit. He promised three years, man, _three years_ and I'd be fixed and I could go back to my wife and my home and not be _this bloody thing_. You weren't even alive for the majority of the Prawns' time here on Earth. I've been here three fokkin' times over!"

His shouts were beginning to detract from the homing signal pulling away the others. Some took pause, but not for long. A small part of him tried to be calm and feel bad about the words he was saying, that he had done the right thing and that Oliver was only trying to help, but the pent-up rage and despair from almost eight decades of forcing to cover it all up with a forced optimism would not be held back. Again he was suddenly the panicked, hysterical half-alien running from MNU and trying to cut off his own arm to stop the spread and the old anger at the situation rose up anew. He was okay with giving up a few years to set things right, to fix the things he helped destroy, but this was too much. No matter how hopeful he might try to make himself, the enormity of the experience was too great to handle.

"Three fokkin' years, man! What did you do? Stop for a fokkin' burger on Mars?"

He simply gave up. His will snapped like a tendon and it all poured out of him like lifeblood, the things he had never allowed himself to say to anybody. He yelled, he cursed, he raged at the only thing he could take it out on – Oliver – until he thought his heart might burst.

"There's no fokkin' point now, is there? I might as well just be a fuckin' alien for the rest of my life. They're all dead. Everyone I ever cared about is _dead_, everyone that I loved and that I wanted to go home to. Tania, Fundiswa to thank him, _Tania oh God Tania_…"

When Tania first would not speak to him after the incident, he thought his heart had split asunder in his chest. The pain was physical; he felt a deep ache for it and fury unlike he'd ever felt. He thought that had been the lowest point. But she'd called back. She said okay. She loved him in spite of everything. And then he'd never felt a greater resolve to get back to her.

That pain and anger didn't compare to the present. Tania was gone. He never made good on his promise. She left thinking he would never return, and she died without resolution. Her life ended when he failed. As far as he knew, she never remarried. She never had children of her own, of their own. And the resolve he still felt to get back to her hurt all the more for the fact that there was nothing he could do. Here was their salvation standing before him, and she wasn't there to take a part in it.

No amount of hope in the world could bring back the dead. It was the demon that hunted him in his sleep after he found out, and it followed him in the day like a living nightmare. It hung over him now like a phantom with Tania's face, and this time he couldn't recall anything happy enough to replace it.

Oliver took it all in silence and a heavy, guilty veil of resignation shadowed his features. Wikus couldn't even say anything beyond a guttural utterance of his angel's name. He hit his knees, broken, and his sobs carried over the homing signal. He was only dimly aware of Oliver's hand on his back, pulling him forward to put his forehead against his own forehead, and the repeated apologies and sadness and pain in his own voice.

"There are not enough words in our language to express the grief I feel at causing you this pain. I believed in you, Wikus. You saved me. You saved the people. But I cannot bring back_ your_ people, Wikus, and that saddens me," Oliver said finally. Wikus stayed silent, staring numbly at the ground. Tania's face stared back at him, the light behind her forming a halo in her golden hair.

Oliver sighed. "I am too late, but I want to help you. We made a promise to you. Returning your humanity is the only thing I can do. It will at least allow you to live among your own people and not be shunned."

Wikus wanted to ask again what the point was. He didn't care anymore. But still, he took the hand offered to him and let himself be led to the shuttle in the center of the city. He was unaware of the people gathering at Oliver's return only to find the Prawn leader serious and drawn. His guards deflected questions. Some cameras flashed. And some people whispered. Some were heirs to the people who lived in the world when the name 'Wikus van de Merwe' struck entire rooms silent in a mix of fear and fascination. Those people passed the story down to their children and then those children passed it on to theirs, talking of the time when a man from Johannesburg became the most talked about man on the planet.

Those children, standing on the sidewalk watching the strange procession go by, wondered. A thought occurred to them, and they all thought the same things: They used to swear up and down that he was probably turned into an alien by now. They played all those documentaries. Could the old Prawn accompanying the younger the man that used to be Wikus van de Merwe?

If they asked Wikus, he would say not anymore, if he said anything at all. Looking up at the mothership casting its round shadow upon the city, he resigned himself to putty in the hands of others. He was a willing puppet all over again. Something in him laughed at the prospect. All the waiting and surviving to finally get to the thing that mattered most, and here it was, a bitter disappointment, the great tragedy. He didn't care. This really was only a stepping stone to get to the thing that mattered most.

The person who mattered most.

Tania.

Oliver's voice sounded like it was under water, but the gist of it made it sound like nothing he didn't already expect. The transformation would likely be painful. It would take several days. It would involve shedding and weeping and temporary blindness. A second Prawn he didn't know pulled Oliver aside and Wikus only overheard it say "think of his age, it may be too traumatic" but Oliver shooed the other one away. It had to be done. Oliver asked again if this was what he wanted. Wikus accepted with a dumb nod, and an iridescent fluid shining in a syringe was injected into his arm.

The mothership stayed for two weeks. It took half that to ferry all the Prawns from the surface up to the mothership and then the other half to try and track down any that remained alive out there in the world. Wikus stayed in the shuttle for the duration, lying in a locked, separate room on an examination table beneath a carousel of torturous-looking instruments with glowing power displays. The return back to being a human was much the same as the reverse. A lot of blood was involved and pieces of his exoskeleton fell off with dull, organic thuds onto the floor, revealing pasty white skin draped over a brittle bone structure.

He wasn't sure if he screamed or not during the transformation, but when he regained consciousness, silence reigned. The ceiling, now unfamiliar, swam and the room spun around him and nothing would come into focus. Gravity was painful. He felt like he was being pressed slowly into the top of the examination table like dough beneath the rolling pin. When he tried to raise his head to look around, he couldn't pick it up more than an inch before it fell back down. Something was wrong. He picked up his hands to look at them; they shook and trembled and the knobby, shrunken claws that looked back at him couldn't possibly be _his_ hands even though the thumb and index finger on his left hand were still gone. His vision went dark and light and back again until the energy in the atrophied muscles in his arms ran out and the panic set in.

Weakened cries eventually brought in Oliver, who fell backwards into his lieutenant in shock.

The Prawn had not returned to the Man whom Oliver remembered; indeed, it had returned to reality. An ancient, shrunken skeleton of a human lay there on the table making piteous, bewildered noises and fighting to move, to live. His attempts to get a coherent response out of Wikus failed. Either he couldn't hear anymore or the animalistic fear in his rheumy eyes won out against his mind. Oliver searched for something to knock over, and his fist connected with a canister of black fluid. Oliver spun towards the lieutenant.

"Get the Commissioner!"

Oliver stayed at Wikus's side, holding onto his mutilated hand for dear life. He understood what had happened but refused to believe it. He had wanted for Wikus to be able to look in a mirror and see himself, but this…he probably couldn't see the mirror, much less recognize himself without having a heart attack. It was all wrong, but Oliver fought to keep his thoughts logical and calm. He was successful enough to communicate what needed to happen when the Commissioner came jogging in with Oliver's lieutenant. The shock on the human's face was palpable, and after a short explanation and the implications hit home, he agreed immediately.

While Wikus was turning back, Oliver was active. He sent the mothership back to the homeworld and stayed with a small crew on the shuttle, which had its own interstellar drive. He spoke with several leaders in the city and over the phone and video feed with other human leaders.

The questions were predictably aimed at the shuttle and how it was powered and how long it took to get from place to place. Oliver declined those questions. He was not at liberty to discuss the details; his own leadership had been quite specific regarding that. Those who were most interested, though, in talking with him were the developers of a project they called 'Elysium.'

The reference was beyond Oliver's knowledge, but he got the concept – a space station large enough to hold roughly a million people with a breathable atmosphere. He offered advice where he could, but he had the same tight-fisted grip on his engineering ability as his father; he stayed away from direct help. The next topic they had exhausted was the Med-Pod and its short-comings. He had even been shown a prototype, and asked to help.

The technology was not much different on his home planet. Healing pods were a common thing, but rarely used, even among the upper echelons of the society and usually only for serious injury. Humans, though, their ambition was endless. He was a product of their mistreatment, but having known Wikus and experiencing a more or less welcoming environment upon landing, he saw little other reason why they might use them. Or how. There were little to no purposes for it regarding weaponry, so he saw as little harm in it.

They helped him travel to the development site located in a place called the United States. There, he helped fix the bugs in the machine that were leaving test subjects horribly disfigured. Now they could heal people, even those born with disabilities that were otherwise inoperable. Oliver found it somewhat noble. One of them asked afterwards, 'does this mean that your people will look upon us better?' Oliver could not confirm that, but he could not deny. He had a more forgiving nature than his father and much preferred diplomacy.

Brute force got him home, but it was a messy business.

So when he saw the old creature that used to be Wikus van de Merwe writhing there on the table and asked himself how he could fix this, the answer was simple. If the Med-Pod could reatomize a human with terminal cancer, then it could easily fix the tragedy before him.

And that would give Wikus his second chance to have a life.

Oliver and the Commissioner peered into the video feed on the tablet, Oliver with his long arms crossed over his chest and the Commissioner fiddling with his tie. A woman in a white coat with black hair in a severe bun answered.

"Nice to see you again, Dominick, what brings you to call at this hour?" Her tone was pleasant but her expression never strayed from neutral, and her eyes never left Oliver.

"We have a bit of a medical situation, Maggie, and we were wondering if you've finished those calibrations on the Med-Pod yet," he replied, managing a nervous smile. Maggie's eyes went from Dominick to Oliver.

"We should be finishing within the next few hours. Why do you ask?"

"Forgive me, you remember Mr. Oliver Johnson, the repair source, yes?"

"I do."

"This is him. He is an emissary for his, um, people, and he has a request for you. Mr. Johnson, Dr. Margaret Underwood. We met in London for a thing, it's not important." Dominick picked up the tablet and moved towards the table where Wikus lay, stable and conscious but otherwise unresponsive. Maggie could catch glimpses of the inside of the shuttle, but the feed turned suddenly on a man, or what should have been a man.

"Oh my God…"

"This…is Wikus van de Merwe, actually a close acquaintance of Mr. Johnson's. See, he's been, uh-"

"Wikus van de Merwe? You have _the Wikus van de Merwe_ there with you?"

"He's been a Prawn for the past eighty years or so, naturally, and we've, I mean Mr. Johnson has only recently been able to return to, uh, remedy the matter." He turned the camera back to himself. "Unfortunately, uh, there are some complications, eh?"

Oliver pulled the camera to face him. "Can you help us, please?"

"Can you help us, Maggie?"

Maggie's mouth had fallen open in awe and even with her severe bun, managed to look appropriately stunned. "I…"

"We have the transport."

"It's very fast."

"It's quite fast."

Maggie looked like the world had dropped into her lap. It had, in a way. She covered her a mouth a moment. "Like, airliner fast?"

"How far is it?" Oliver asked.

"To London, almost ten thousand kilometers."

Oliver paused for a moment, calculating. "We can make it in approximately seven to eight of your hours, I believe."

"We don't have a lot of time, Maggie. I'm not sure how much longer Mr. van de Merwe will last."

Maggie looked nervous. "We haven't done any tests yet, but I'll do what I can to speed things up. We should have one at one hundred percent by the time you get here. Just promise me one thing, Dom."

"Yes, anything."

"I get to be the first one after Mr. Johnson to talk to him after he wakes up. He's …"

Oliver looked into the camera, eyes narrowing. "I can hear the interest in your voice, Doctor. This man is _not_ an experiment, and I will not allow you or any other to let him come to harm."

Maggie stared back, unable to understand the words but quite aware of the threat in his voice. Dominick blanched. "Maggie, I'd take it easy if I were you on your demands yet."

"Yes, yes, I had gathered that was something of a scolding, or a threat maybe. I apologize. My intentions are purely educational, I swear."

"I will be the judge of that."

Dominick translated and then set off to secure airspace from Johannesburg to London. Oliver put his own crew into motion, and before long, the shuttle lifted off.

Wikus could only hear muffled voices and the tremors of the room around him, and the only picture clear to him was a blond woman framed by light leaning over him, a comforting hand cupping his cheek and a welcoming smile on her pretty face. A weak smile of his own twitched at his mouth and his hand groped for hers.

_Hold me down, baby. Take me home. _


	3. Swan Song

**AN: The research center where Maggie works is a fictional place to my knowledge. **

**Chapter Three: Swan Song**

Night fell over London, but smoke obscured the stars from the fires resulting from the riots happening in various parts of the city. Maggie Underwood stood in the top floor of the London Medical Education and Research Center, a cup of coffee in one hand, the other housed in her coat pocket, and looked out at the nighttime cityscape. The glow of the flames made it look like Hell had opened up in different places in the city. Maggie sighed to herself. Things were getting bad, but the worse hadn't happened yet. She took a sip of her coffee and grimaced. It had gone cold. They thought riots were bad now; just wait until the most powerful people on the planet left.

Security followed the money these days, and it was about to leave. Maggie glanced over her shoulder at the darkened room behind her. The workstations were empty. She'd sent the employees home for the night, not mentioning the expected visitors. One light stayed on above the only working Med-Pod station there in London. The recalibrations were the final piece. The next step was to test it, make sure the person on the other side came out in one piece, and it was a success. All that was left after that was to box it up and send it into orbit with Elysium.

Her phone buzzed. A text from Dominick Orr. They were fifteen minutes out. She replied: _Use the heli pad on the roof._ Pocketing the phone, she took a deep breath.

Working on the Med-Pods, or as some of her staff joked, 'the Golden Apple' project, had been a constant source of work and self-indulgence for the past several years. As a doctor, she loved the idea of being a part of something that could heal anything, but as a researcher, it had been a veritable playground. Even the frustration of the finished product being so close but still so unreachable had given her determination. And then Oliver Johnson came back to Earth, and the last piece of the puzzle fell into their laps.

It was bitter sweet. Now the real trial could begin.

Wikus van de Merwe. His name was the one she'd read about since med school. Researchers wanted to find him badly. It wasn't every day that a human was exposed to an alien substance and survived, much less get turned into one of the things. And he likely had a long, important story to tell and many, many questions to answer. Her inner student was celebrating, but her inner professional was conflicted. If this was the real Wikus van de Merwe, he'd be over a hundred years old. It made sense he'd functioned longer as a Prawn – they had a surprising life expectancy for insect-based life forms, and given he likely had something special about his DNA, it was probably prolonged further – but apparently turning him back just reverted him to an equally old human.

Looking out the window allowed her to watch Oliver's shuttle slow to approach speed. How such an ungainly craft could cut through atmosphere like a jet was beyond her. It disappeared overhead to the roof, engines whining.

Maggie pursed her lips, took another deep breath, and headed for the stairs. She set her coffee on a desk before she left the room.

The aliens and Dom were stepping out of the shuttle by the time she had the door propped open. A high wind whipped at her coat and skirt, and it made Dom's jacket flap and his hair fall into his face. He had stepped off first, followed by Oliver. Maggie was surprised at his height; they seemed smaller in the film documentaries. She decided then that she'd probably never get over seeing them. It wasn't so much fear as it was awe, but something about them made her grow very still and feel childlike.

In his arms, the alien carried somebody covered in a ratty, brown jacket. She only knew it was a person by the bony feet sticking out from under the coat and the way Oliver held him like he was a china doll. He only glanced up enough to follow Dom. The rest of the time, his eyes never left the face of the person he held. Her heart caught in her throat at the sight.

Minutes later they were immersed in the quiet of the work floor. Maggie pointed them towards the Med-Pod.

"I want to thank you again, Maggie. You don't know what this means," Dom said. He sounded harried and sad. Maggie placed a hand on his shoulder with a sympathetic smile.

"I shouldn't be doing it. The Board would go bonkers if they found out I let an unauthorized subject take a Pod for a spin."

Dom winced, but Maggie continued smiling. "But I'd do it all again if you asked me."

"Thank you, Maggie."

Oliver had gone ahead and laid Wikus down on the scanning table. Again Maggie was struck by the gentleness in which he handled the man. He then carefully removed the jacket covering him and folded it over one arm. They'd put Wikus into what looked some old clothes of Dom's, but it couldn't hide what made Oliver so concerned. Nothing could hide that.

The ancient man on the table hardly moved. Maggie could only just see his thin chest rising and falling rapidly underneath a t-shirt. His breaths were shallow, and she could hear it rasping in the quiet of the room. Occasionally, he would try to say something, but it only came out as a gasp. His hands feebly tried to hold on to something he could see but they couldn't. She could only just recognize the man from the documentaries in the sunken face.

A question from Oliver broke her stare. Dom cleared his throat. "Do you mind if he takes a look at the calibrations first?"

"Oh, yes, sorry. Let me just put in my password."

She stepped forward hurriedly to the control panel and began typing. She could feel Oliver's eyes on her now. Out of the corner of her eye, she could tell his gaze was narrow and suspicious. It made her face flush; she'd been standing there looking at his friend like he was a unicorn and she was a knight come to kill it for its horn. But she couldn't deny it, either.

When she finished and the function screen popped up, she stepped quickly out of the way. Oliver took control of the keyboard, typing with surprising skill. He leaned in close to the screen, squinting at the characters and numbers, typing in a sequence here, accessing a menu there. The operating lights on the Pod activated and a hum of energy overwhelmed Wikus's difficult breathing.

Oliver asked something else.

"He wants to know if he'd be able to do it himself," Dom translated.

"Absolutely. Just return to the main screen and hit the scan command."

Oliver nodded, and did so.

And then, because it was the only thing they could do, they stood back and watched.

/.../

Wikus walked in through the front door to a outburst. It wasn't aimed at him, though. Tania was on the phone. He paused, the door halfway open, and debated briefly on just listening to see what it was that was angering his new wife so but thought better of it. He did catch the words 'dad' and 'him' a few times, though. His mind leapt to Tania's disapproving father, but he quashed the thought. He didn't want to intrude.

So he shut the door behind him, set down his briefcase, and called out, "Tania, home." He couldn't help but smile upon hearing her voice, even if she had been shouting. He figured he'd never get tired of hearing her voice.

That voice, so angry before, switched tacks immediately and genuine happiness soothed the burn. "Howzit, baby? Just a minute!"

The conversation continued in a lower albeit still rather testy tone as Wikus took off his shoes and coat. He reclaimed his briefcase and made for his desk, whistling lightly. He had put away most of the papers and such when he heard the phone slam on the receiver. Tania's steps on the carpet turned him around, but by the time he took her into his arms for a kiss, she was smiling brightly.

He decided to ask about it later. They'd been over the subject of Piet Smit before, but her concerns were his concerns and vice versa. Fortunately for him, Tania saved him the awkward question as to whether or not her father had called chastising her about her choice of a husband again.

Dinner was relatively quiet but not uncomfortably so. He'd caught a translation error during an interrogation which resulted in the Prawn in question being let free. He thought it was a small victory. No wasted tax dollars there. She'd ordered more books for the library she worked at and hung new curtains in the bedroom. They laughed over a joke about a fisherman and a priest even though Wikus messed up the punch line.

They put on Albert Frost and washed the dishes together in easy silence; she washed, he dried. While passing a plate between them, the thing slipped from their hands and hit the floor with a crash. Tania swore and bent to gather it up. "I'm sorry, that was my fault," she said, keeping her face down. Wikus knelt to help her, using the dish towel to gather up the pieces.

"No, no, it's fine, baby. Just a slip of the hand. It was probably my fault, anyway, eh."

She didn't reply, but the plate was cleaned up in short time. Wikus dumped the last of the pieces in the trash and turned to find Tania facing away from him, her shoulders shaking and her fists clenched. He set the dish towel on the counter. "Tania? What's wrong?"

She sniffed loudly, still not facing him, and he hurried over to her. "It was just a plate, my love, no need to cry now," he said, smiling in a comforting manner. She didn't say anything, but tears fell down her face. Wikus sighed and pulled her in close to him. Her face went into the crook of his neck, and he felt her hands clutching the back of his shirt. She shook in his arms. It pained him.

They didn't say anything for several minutes. "Tell me what's wrong, baby," Wikus said quietly. "You are very much too strong to be upset by a little plate. There has to be something, eh?"

Tania sniffed two or three more times before she answered. "I got a phone call from my dad…"

Wikus lost against holding back a short laugh. "I had thought so. What was it this time? My choice in sweater vests or the waste paper basket I tripped over in the office or the time I left those files in my bag and went on holiday without realizing they were in there and Mr. Smit didn't have them for the big board meeting or…?"

Tania's laugh was muffled but genuine all the same. She looked up him. Her eyes were red and teary, but she wore a tiny smile. Wikus smiled back. "See, there's my angel," he murmured, reaching up to tuck a stray strand of hair behind her ear. Her smile broadened.

"Oh, Wikus…"

"I know it's hard. It is hard for me, as well. I _work_ for the man."

"I know. It's just…he treats me like a child. Like I don't know what I want."

"This is the one thing I can relate to Piet Smit with. You are his child, Tania, his only child. He must love you very much to want only the best for you. I'm not perfect-"

She stopped him with a kiss. "Don't be silly. You're absolutely perfect." He grinned sheepishly.

"All the same, though… We both want the very best for you, and I _know_ I am not perfect, so I understand where he is coming from. You're out of his hands now." He lifted up her chin with a finger. "Be kind to him."

"You always know what to say to make me feel better," she said, smiling. He shrugged, grinning. He couldn't help but smile when she did.

"If I didn't, I wouldn't be doing a very good job, huh?"

Her laugh warmed his soul. "And _that's_ why you're perfect."

Later something woke him from a pleasant slumber. His eyes popped open and almost immediately he knew Tania wasn't in the bed next to him. He sat up, blinking suddenly. It seemed to not be night anymore. The room was filled with an unnatural light that hurt his eyes in spite of the new curtains. There was no sign of Tania, though, so he scooted off the bed and walked towards the hall.

The light there was harsh and unnatural, as well, and as he stepped through the door, his mind went blank. He stood there a moment, trying to remember what he'd stepped out to do. The light seemed to be coming from one end of the hallway. He peered in that direction and was suddenly reminded of his quest. A woman stood in silhouette at the end of the hallway.

Blocking the light with one hand, he started walking that direction. "Tania?"

It struck him suddenly that the name didn't sound familiar, so he wasn't sure why he used it. He wasn't sure why he was in a hallway, either. The woman turned, though, and her features became clear. She was pretty with blond hair, and she wore white nightclothes.

He didn't know who she was, but when she smiled at him, his spirit soared. He smiled dreamily back and headed her direction.

The light grew very bright suddenly, like a spot light, and her silhouette was lost in the flash. It forced him shut to his eyes for only a moment, but when he opened them, still squinting, he could only see a dark figure almost lost in the harshness.

"Wait!" he called, but the light grew brighter and the air around him turned to fire and his skin started crawling and moving and pins and needles shot through his limbs.

He woke up screaming.


	4. Lazarus

AN: Officially, I hereby claim Savior by Rise Against as the theme song for this fanfiction. I also do not own any of it, except the OC's of course (Maggie and Dom so far.) Also, shout out to Zuvios Gemini for making a gif set of my favorite D9 deleted scene, 'Steal Tank.'

I've also gone back and edited the previous chapter regarding the use of the word 'fok.' I wasn't sure about the spelling and got paranoid when I typed the draft, but I've looked it up and Wikipedia and other sources have assuaged my concerns about misusing it. Do let me know if I've missed something!

**Chapter Four: Lazarus **

Oliver didn't see Dom's eyes nearly bug out of his head nor Maggie's light up like a child opening a present. Wikus and the chance of redemption rebuilt themselves there on the table, and Oliver had eyes only for that.

It was a marvelous piece of machinery they'd put together. It would open many doors for many people. Time reversed itself right there in front of them, and before long the brown returned to his hair and the lines faded from his face. Flesh filled back into the spaces between his bones, and even the missing digits on his hand returned. A muttered oath of amazement from Dom made Oliver smile lightly. He echoed the sentiment, although in less audible ways.

Then, at the 96% mark, Wikus's eyes flew open and his scream lit up the room. All three of them jumped, and Maggie screamed herself. Wikus sat bolt upright as the atomizer passed by overhead, and it pushed him from the table and onto the floor. Oliver vaulted over the machine, which stopped and pinged calmly at the lack of biology under the scanner.

Wikus lay on his back on the floor half curled up into a ball, his fists balled up beneath his chin. His teeth chattered and his eyes were squeezed shut, but he was breathing. Oliver hovered over him, concern wrinkling his brow.

"Wikus? Are you all right? Can you hear me?"

The man's eyes flew back open. Almost immediately fear entered them. "Get the fok away from me!" he shouted, unfurling to scoot away from the alien and up against the wall.

Oliver jerked back like he'd been slapped. Maggie hurried by him to Wikus's side. Her doctor side kicked in.

"Mr. Van de Merwe, are you quite all right?" she asked, reaching for his wrist to check his pulse. Wild-eyed and suspicious, Wikus instinctively pulled away.

"What? Who, who is this? Who are you talking about?" His gaze flew around the people gathered in confusion, lingering only slightly on Oliver, who was resting on his knees. The pulse under Maggie's fingers beat at a hundred miles an hour, but it was strong at least. Her own heart beat hadn't slowed from a few moments ago. She looked up to find Wikus fixing her with a look of bewildered intensity. "Where the fok am I?"

She stammered a moment, her mouth opening and closing. There was a lot in those eyes, and they caught her off guard. "L-London. You're in London."

"Why?"

At this point, Dom stepped in, having recovered. He took a few steps forward and knelt in front of Wikus. "Mr. Van de Merwe, I understand this may difficult for you-"

His eyes narrowed slightly in recognition. "You're from Johannesburg?"

"I am. Look, you've been…away for a while, so it may be difficult for you, but we brought you here to heal you. This was the only place with the facilities to accommodate what you needed."

This only succeeded in making Wikus look more alarmed. "Fok, man, what was wrong with me?" He stared down at himself, running his hands over his face and neck. He stared at one hand occasionally like it didn't belong. "I don't even know who I am, and you're telling me this was the only place they could take me?"

Dom scratched his head. "I …don't know how to put this any other way, but…you were an alien. Like him. You were exposed to an alien substance, and it changed you." He gestured over his shoulder to Oliver. The alien's face was a mask as he pushed himself back to his feet. Wikus stared, head shaking slightly.

"That's impossible. That doesn't happen to people. What is this, man? What is that thing?"

"It happened to _you_," Oliver said quietly, rising to his feet. He appreciated the looks of apology and sympathy from the humans. If this was the price he had to pay for failing, then he supposed he would have to live with it. Dom made a helpless noise. Maggie looked and felt out of place.

"Wikus, this is Oliver Johnson. He knew you before…everything."

"Stop calling me that." He could only stare at Oliver in incredulity, still shaking his head. His hair fell into his face. "I just, this is too much. I want to go back."

"Back where?"

"Johannesburg."

"Do you remember anything?"

"Johannesburg." He shrugged. "A person." He shrugged again. "That's it. I'm looking for something. Or somebody. I think." He made a noise of frustration, scrubbing at his face. "I don't know," he groaned. "If I go back there, maybe it'll all make sense."

Maggie and Dom shared a look. "Maybe going back home would help him remember," she suggested softly. She put a hand on Wikus's shoulder. "But I would like to run you through a few tests to make sure you're—"

"_No_."

Wikus's vehemence surprised them. His face had gone deadly serious. "I will not spend one second more in this place, man. I'm fine, I am functioning fine. I don't care what happened before. It's done, my heart's beating and my lungs have air. I just want to leave this place."

A stern protest nearly made its way out of Maggie's mouth, and she hoped her ulterior motive wasn't showing, but Dom's expression stopped her. He kept his eyes on her as he extended a hand to Wikus to help him up. "We'll take you back. Ja, Oliver?" His face pleaded over his shoulder to the Prawn leader, but Dom saw little disagreement in Oliver's posture. His slumped shoulders and downturned eyes translated into defeat. Dom's heart went out to him. All these years to fulfil a promise and it came at this cost.

Wikus took his hand, brow furrowed. He looked almost to tears. His legs felt surprisingly strong beneath him but new and springy, like they'd hardly been used. Dom angled him towards the door before turning to Maggie. She stopped him speaking, though, by raising a hand.

"I'm sorry. I really must protest this." She fixed Wikus with she knew to be her most daunting look. It worked on the interns like a wonder. "Mr. Van de Merwe, you've just been brought back from the brink of death and eighty something years of wear and tear on your mind and body. That is a very rapid transition from one state to the next…" She speared Oliver and Dom with the same look. "…no matter how well it worked, I refuse to let you out of this building until _I_, as the only qualified physician present, can assure your health is stable. Oh, and not to mention, you're the first person to walk away from that bloody machine unscathed _and_ cured!"

Wikus took a moment to digest that, eyebrows meeting in a frown. Needless to say, this wasn't the reaction Maggie was used to receiving. "I will not be spoken to like a child, madam. I think I would know how to judge my own health, thank you. Eighty years or not, clearly my past life is not worth remembering and not remembering I do not find to be a big detriment, eh?" He pointed at her accusingly. He took an angry step forward. "_Stop_ trying to keep me here when I don't want to be. I. Am. Fine. And I refuse to get paraded around as your lab experiment."

He took a pause, apparently caught off guard by own admonition. Maggie couldn't respond; it surprised her, too. Breathing heavily, he blinked once and turned away abruptly, making towards the door. His bare feet padded against the floor. It was the only noise. "I'm leaving."

"The shuttle's on the roof," Dom called after him. Then he approached Maggie. He pulled her into a hug, planting kisses on both sides of her face. "Thank you, Maggie. I'm sorry we couldn't you get your big news."

Maggie looked miserable and tired. "It's fine, Dom. I live to serve." She pulled him close to speak into his ear. "But I really don't like him leaving here without at least going through some tests. I'm _concerned_ about his mental health. The Med Pod could likely fix this. This doesn't feel right."

Dom pressed his lips into a thin line. "Perhaps it's for the best he doesn't remember. That's a lot of traumatic things to try and bring back."

"But—"

"Trust me. I don't think it's necessary to make him relive all of that."

"I'm very reluctant, Dom. Very, very reluctant."

"I know, but I'm sorry. He won't have it, clearly. Anyway, I'm no psychologist, but this will give him the chance at a clean slate. For better _or_ worse."

Maggie did not answer. Her nostrils flared. For a second, she sneered, wondering what gave Dominick Orr of all people the right to assume that he knew what was best for a man like Wikus van de Merwe. Then again, what gave her the right? This had never been done. After a moment, her ire burned down. Dhe jerked her head in the direction of the door. "If you ever need anything else, Dom, just ask."

Dom managed a pained smile. "Next time, I'll be the one helping you, eh? Take care, Maggie." He gave her a pat on the shoulder and then headed towards the exit. Oliver paused only to express his gratitude in the form of a short bow. Maggie smiled politely and bowed awkwardly in return.

She didn't go up to the roof with them. Instead, she waited until the whine of the engines died away to move. She turned and made for the Med-Pod, which was still pinging faintly. Shaking her head, she absently hit the reset button. She ignored the 'INCOMPLETE' in yellow letters at the bottom of the screen, but it made the bile rise in her throat. The road to Hell was paved with good intentions, and she was certain she'd just paved a hundred miles of it all on her own.

/…/

The shuttle flight back to Johannesburg was awkward and quiet. Wikus stayed glued to Dom as the only other human, untrusting of the Prawns. Oliver stayed in the cockpit with his guards and lieutenant, staring blankly out the view screen. In the meantime, Dom recounted what he knew about Wikus's past only because at one point during the trip, when the silence got to be too much, he asked in a quiet voice.

Dom did the best he could. He recalled when the Prawns first stopped over Johannesburg, or at least what he remembered out of the history books. He wasn't old enough to actually remember it. A weapons development agency called the MNU handled them, and Wikus had been one of their employees. He was assigned to issuing eviction notices to the Prawns living in District 9, the MNU-controlled slums where they lived. It was there he was …infected or exposed or whatever the terminology was to some kind of alien fluid. That resulted in morphing his biology into the Prawns', and supposedly spurred his motivation to help the Prawns get home and then get back to change him back into a human.

To Wikus, it was all unfamiliar. None of the words stirred anything in him. The mention of MNU did make him think of men in suits and politics and bureaucracy, but nothing beyond that. His own name, or what was supposed to be his own name, didn't even sound right.

Whoever that man was, he was dead. He didn't exist anymore. All Wikus van de Merwe got him was a rude wake-up call and a restart back at block one.

Dom patted him on the shoulder, caught somewhere between a friendly smile and grimace. "Sorry, bru. I get this is a bit of a shit show for you."

"A bit?" Wikus scoffed, waving his hands helplessly.

"I know, I'm sorry. I'm just gonna pop over to see how much farther we've got, eh?"

Wikus nodded but did not look up at Dom. The man lingered a moment, watching him in concern before rising and walking up to the cockpit. Wikus waited until the door hissed shut behind him before angrily punching his seat, the shuttle wall, whatever was within reach. Then he let his head fall into his hands, and fury raged there between his ears until he thought he couldn't hear anything anymore. The hum of the engines matched the hum of his body, and when one of the Prawns walked by, he didn't even notice.

One thing came back to him in those moments – a desperate need to find _something_, to get back to it, whatever it was. He swore to himself. The machine or time or whatever had taken all his memories from him, save this one. And it had to be the most frustrating. It couldn't be just a face. It couldn't be a song or a smell. It was drive, a desire, and he didn't know how to satisfy it.

He didn't know what to do.

It was maddening.

/…/

"How is he?"

The question came immediately after the cockpit door shut behind him, and Dom took a second to answer. Oliver looked at him over his shoulder, expression neutral. Oliver's lieutenant did not react. Dom stuffed his hands into his pockets.

"Frustrated. Still a bit disoriented."

Oliver nodded. Dom worried his bottom lip with his teeth. "I think it'll do him good to be back in Jo'burg. That seems to be where his, well, what's left of his memory is taking him."

"I would agree," Oliver replied tersely, turning to look at some of the readings on the instrument panel.

"Are you all right?"

Oliver's lieutenant shot a concerned look at him, something that translated to Dom as "It's not just me, sir."

Oliver frowned. "I have played my part in Wikus van de Merwe's fate, to whatever end. I upheld my end of the bargain. Or, my father's bargain, I guess." He fell silent, his fingers tapping somewhat impatiently on the panel. Dom nodded.

"I can see where you're coming from. My Grandad had…an illness. It's a human one, but I imagine most things with a brain can get it, but…he stopped remembering me when I'd go to visit, just before he died. Even when I'd convince him before I left, I'd come back each time to him as a new person." He stared down at his feet, recalling the mug the old man had thrown at him the last time he went to visit. That was the last time, too, he saw his grandfather alive. "It's hard."

Oliver squeezed his eyes shut. "I can recall Wikus as he was very clearly. Very clearly, in fact, a man full of fear. I met him before he had changed completely." He stared at his arm and the fist balled at the end of it. "He had a better connection with my father, so I should not be concerned he doesn't remember." This time, he turned completely to face Dom. "But I have failed. I failed both him and my father. I failed the people waiting on him."

Dom stared back. "What kept you, if you don't mind me asking?"

The look in Oliver's eyes would stay with Dom for the rest of his life.

"Fear, Mr. Orr. My father's story did not push our leaders to act. It frightened them. The Weeping Death, why, it's very name strikes us silent. Most of us, at least. That it took out an entire mining ship and, again, recently almost all living Prawns on Earth spooked them. They did not want to bring it back to the planet." Oliver's expression hardened. "That was why they left us here in the first place."

The sound of Oliver's mandibles clacking angrily and the writhing of the tentacles around his mouth unsettled Dom a little in spite of having grown up around Prawns. "My father wasted his life trying to convince them. Human weapons capabilities were one thing. Risking the life of the entire species for only a few is another…no matter what cost."

Dom only nodded his head. It was all he could do. There was a lot of pent-up frustration in Oliver's words, no doubt some if not all of it from the current situation. And he'd been relatively helpless to change it. All the waiting and now pile Wikus's state on top of it. Small wonder Oliver felt defeated.

"I don't know how much I can help with _that_," Dom began hesitantly, "but I can do my best to get Wikus off on the right foot back home."

Oliver stood up from his chair and went over to Dom. His face was earnest.

"You'll watch over him?"

"I…I'll do what I can."

"I would express my sincerest gratitude, but there is no translation for it in your language."

Dom nodded again, smiling awkwardly. "It's fine."

Oliver surprised him by extending a hand to him. "You are a good man, Dominick Orr. In your language, you could say I owe you one."

"No, I owe you, Mr. Johnson. It's been a privilege being your translator." Dom took the offered hand and shook.

The Prawn only patted him on the shoulder, but it'd be a story Dom would pass down to his grandkids, how he helped an alien leader reach out to an old friend and make things right.


End file.
